Friday, June 4, 2010

The Meeting of the Waters - Fritz Kling

This was a fascinating and helpful book. I work with an organization where we help facilitate groups to go on relief and development missions trips, so the global church is my everyday reality. This book was an encouraging and helpful resource that at times reinforced what I have been encountering in the church and at times it shed new light into a shadowed area for me. I have enjoyed this book a great deal! Fritz Kling has an effective writing style that I found easy to read and relate to my own life. I would recommend this book to those that are interested in current trends or those that work within the church who have ever wondered where it is heading or why.

Two rivers meet in Manaus, Brazil, at the turbulent head of the Amazon River. The different-colored tributaries do not give way or merge, but instead strain against their common seam. For ten miles, they share the same channel but remain distinct like oil and water.

Christendom finds itself at just such a murky and perilous juncture. The church is caught between its tried-and-true past and an all-bets-are-off future. Christianity throughout the world is stunning in its scope and spiritual impact, but what is happening to the Church as new technological, promotional, and generational shifts make their unavoidable mark? And what difference does it make for Christians in day-to-day life?

The Meeting of the Waters, a new book by Fritz Kling, identifies seven trends—including migration, machines, and the growing Mercy Generation—having an impact on today’s Global Church. Neither an institution nor a bureaucracy, the global Church is incredibly adaptive and vibrant. It has long been the world’s most effective relief agent, meeting needs across the globe through justice advocacy, material aid, counseling, biblical proclamation, education, and more. But what forces are shaping the global church, and what will it take in this unique place in time for the church to continue its mission of hope? Equal parts travelogue, character study, and global documentary, this breakthrough book seeks to answer these important questions and is written for anyone eager to make a difference in a changing world.

Kling’s experience as a foundation executive who has researched and directed investments to Christian ministries around the world has taught him how to “connect the dots”—to understand how forces secular and sacred, ancient and modern, spiritual and physical, domestic and international have informed Christian ministry. Over the past eight years, Kling has met with more than a thousand indigenous church leaders from forty different countries. He has made airlines re-think their frequent flyer programs, bounced through endless van rides, and drunk gallons of Coke and chai in both slums and skyscrapers. Secular commentators have long written about globalization’s wake, but Fritz Kling has witnessed it firsthand—through a Christian lens. TheMeeting of the Waters is the byproduct of these experiences and is therefore able to give an original and incredibly well researched perspective on the growing need to understand ministry in a rapidly changing world.

The Meeting of the Waters will be an important addition to the libraries of anyone who wants to make a difference for Christ in a global community. In particular, pastors, mission pastors, missions committees, seminary professors, missionaries, and mission agency employees will find this book a fascinating and useful tool.